


New Year's Moneypenny

by iCarly1969



Category: James Bond - All Media Types, SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: Boys Being Boys, Happy New Year!, M/M, POV Moneypenny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5593801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iCarly1969/pseuds/iCarly1969
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q was in the kitchen, she knew. He was quite loud as he clambered up and down and looked through the cupboards in search of cat food – the opened pack had ran out, and he has, apparently, no clue as to where he stowed the rest of it.</p><p>The cats, meanwhile, were both sitting on the sofa, staring at her. There was no hissing yet, which Moneypenny took to be a good sign, but their gaze was quite intense. It has led to her feeling that somehow, the cats could read her thoughts and have discovered her nefarious plans involving luring Q away from his house and abandoning the two of them for the company of humans while watching the countdown.</p><p>It would certainly explain why she was getting the feeling that they were quite angry at her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Year's Moneypenny

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What You've Left Behind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5196839) by [iCarly1969](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iCarly1969/pseuds/iCarly1969). 



> This is now the lose sequel to What You've Left Behind, more of a fix-it, and all mistakes are mine.  
> Happy New Year, and enjoy!

Q was still mooning after 007, and Moneypenny has decided that enough was enough.

It had been half a year – something has to be done about this. 007 has, surprisingly, still not drifted back yet, and she was tired of watching Q work himself to death trying to deny that he was _not_ alright with 007 stringing him along and dropping him just like that, all while still waiting for him to come back.

Not just because she has no idea who would take in his cats after Q does drop dead, mind you, even if they were incarnations of the devil – was it Lucifer or Satan? – himself and cannot seem to get along with anyone the moment Q was not in sight: they tried to scratch her when she tried to feed them after having went over to their house bearing Q, passed out from exhaustion. Not just because this was actually getting _painful_ to watch either, if only because Q reminded her so much of what her little brother could have grown up to be that he is, to her, more than just a friend, as good as the only family she has now. No, she was putting her foot down because she was his friend, too, and she would not see him do this to himself.

If he must die, he would not die buried under his projects and the mountains of paperwork accumulated thanks to the newly resurrected 006 and the newly recruited 003, a living proof that 00-agents do, indeed, reproduce, and that they produce quite alarming offsprings too, while they’re at that.

The only reason she had not interfered earlier was because Q was a big boy and likely would not have appreciated her efforts. Christmas showed her that something simply must be done, though. No matter how commercial the manufactured holiday was, it is still worrying to enter Q branch the morning after Christmas to find Q in the clothes he was in when she left him on Christmas Eve, vaguely resembling the walking dead in those action movies showing in the theatres recently. Even M and Tanner had gone home to be with their family and the two days spent with Alan were, undeniably, God’s gift to her, if there ever was a god.

He would not spend New Year’s Eve with only feline company. And, since Alan had quite graciously agreed to babysit his little sister, he did not mind her going over to Q’s.

This was why, on New Year’s Eve, Moneypenny followed Q home instead of going to her apartment, after successfully reminding and making Q believe that his cats need to see him at least once a week if there is to be any owner-cat bonding going on.

Q was quite loud as he clambered up and down, looking through all the cupboards in search of food for his cats: the opened pack had ran out and he has, apparently, no clue as to where he stowed the rest of it.

The cats, meanwhile, were both sitting on the sofa, staring at her as she stood against the empty wine cabinet next to the door, a little unnerved. There was no hissing yet, which Moneypenny took to be a good sign, but their gaze was quite intense. It is quite unsettling to be on the receiving end of a stare that pierced right into your soul, directed at you by a devil in cat form.

Doubly so since she has the feeling that somehow, the cats could read her thoughts and had uncovered her nefarious plans involving possibly luring Q away from his house and abandoning the two of them for the company of the more human while watching the countdown. The only reason she has not done that in the first place was because, as great as she was, this was Q and she has no idea how to get him out of the house. 007, as far as she could recall, seems to be the only person who could ever persuade Q to leave the only two places he had ever nested in, his MI6 office and this house.

Q disturbed the stare-down she was engaged in with the cats when he came out from the kitchen. “I must have forgotten to stock up,” he said, looking quite apologetically at his cats, both of whom had turned their adorable little faces to him, suddenly angelic and vulnerable and wide-eyed.

“You have,” Moneypenny said, struck by a wonderful idea. The half-cooked skeleton of a plan was finally starting to take shape in her mind, seeing as she now has the perfect reason to ask Q to go over to her house. This was the perfect opportunity to get Q some company and introduce him to Alan at the same time.

Q winced, as if she had berated him for it. “I was… busy.”

She did not call him out on it. Instead, she pushed forth her idea, “Why don’t you come for dinner, then? Alan certainly wouldn’t mind.” At least, she thought that he would not. They had been going steady for half a year, now, she should probably be introducing him to her friends.

“I…” Q hesitated as he started, gaze falling on Turing and Marple.

“They can come with us!” Moneypenny preempted the question. She made sure to start opening the door before stepping forward to scoop the closest cat – Marple – up, hiding the wince as Marple promptly dug her claws in. From outside the door – there was a slight drizzle, she registered in the back of her mind – she gave him her most beseeching look, practiced on Tanner and the other Q-branch techies.

Q stared for a moment, before glancing at Turing and sighing.

He was smiling as he picked Turing up.

It was his first genuine smile since 007, and Moneypenny could just start feeling things going right.

* * *

 

Things did not go right.

Of course ‘babysitting’ was code for ‘making out with the girl from the coffee shop I frequent and then being caught in our bed’.

She was not entirely certain what transpired, but she did know that it ended with her slamming the door shut on Alan and that girl quite satisfyingly, Q standing in the background. Grimly glaring at the door for a few more seconds, she turned around and felt her face start crumpling.

Q’s uncertainty turned into mild alarm as he stood forward to steady her, directing her to the couch, where he sat her down and she spent a little while making sure she would not ruin her makeup.

“My gods,” she said after a while, certain that she would not break down. She forgot what she was going to say after that. So, “Sorry.” And she meant it.

She really thought that Q would have gotten along with Alan, too.

“Don’t be,” Q said, perched on the other side of the sofa.

Both of them stared contemplatively at the two cats settling down on a cushion Moneypenny had thrown at Alan, one that had fallen next to the door. “Alcohol?” Q suggested after a while.

“Oh,” Moneypenny said, remembering that he was a guest. She made to get up, but Q was already making his way towards the kitchen and before she quite knew it, he was back with two mugs in a hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.

“Can’t quite find anything else,” he said as he handed her the mug with a hello kitty on it – it was her third birthday present from her mother, back when she still loved everything pink and Barbie and hello kitties. She still does, but not as much anymore. His mug was yellow, with a submarine on it. She can’t quite remember where she got that from.

“It’s okay,” she told him as she accepted the bottle, too, pouring out what she want.

It occurs to her, as she was emptying out the bottle, that this was a little absurd – here they were, two single grownups, sitting around on a sofa on New Year’s Eve (after they had fed the cats, of course) drinking champagne from mugs that were relics of her childhood, together yet alone in their own ways as they waited for the countdown to start.

* * *

 

They unearthed more alcohol – turns out that Alan had kept a stash under the sofa, of all places – and proceeded to get smashed. As they went along, Moneypenny somehow managed to make Q _talk_ , and she discovered his secret love for all things ice related, including skiing and skating and dancing on the ice, an image she could barely picture for two seconds before dissolving into giggles, because _Q_ on _ice_. _Dancing_. And apparently he has two brothers, both brilliant and nuts in their own way. And that he had really bawled his eyes out when his childhood friend, Arthur something, migrated to Seattle, but then they ran into each other – quite literally – on a hacker convention some ten odd years later and had barely caught each other up with their lives before Q was brought in by MI6 and that he doesn’t know what happened to his friend because he didn’t dare search, just in case MI6 found Arthur through him. Arthur, he said, was a free spirit who always mean what he says, and that was why he worries, because Arthur had told Q once that he would make himself vanish from the world of the living if anyone was to try to tie him down, because it’s not better to live on your knees than to die on your feet – something Arthur had told Q once. They both raised their mugs and drank to that, because she can understand, and he needed it.

Q, in turn, learns that she had the most brilliant parents, even if she would still never forgive them for making her first boyfriend literally _pee in his pants_ when she first brought him home. She doesn’t blame them for being healthy enough to board the plane while she got fever, she told him earnestly, and Q had nodded solemnly while sipping his drink. She does blame her brother for getting a HIV, though, because that was just a stupid way to go, but in the end, she still forgave him – everyone makes mistakes, after all, even if some mistakes are fatal. Q listens as she talks her way through her childhood and her lovers, and sometime into their conversation, Q said, “We make quite the pair, don’t we?” and they just stopped, for a while.

“Yes, we do,” Moneypenny said after considering the statement. She laughed, taking another gulp of – whiskey? Beer? Whatever it was, it did not taste that good, so she pulled a face and Q started giggling and she started giggling and they forgot completely about it.

They sobered up slightly during the countdown, where they both stared at the television screen until it was midnight, before they exchanged looks and drank even more. Something went down the wrong way, though, and Moneypenny found herself trying to remember not to use too much strength as she patted Q on the back while he hacked and coughed.

Everything was starting to blur, a little, and her voice was a little higher than she thought it was, and towards the end, Moneypenny became quite certain that Alan kept some form of hallucinogen in one of the bottles, because she was definitely _seeing things_.

As in, 007-shaped things standing over her as she passed out about two hours into the new year.

* * *

 

The sun was just rising when she woke up the next morning. Sunlight filtered in, barely tracing her as she snuggled deeper into the blankets before it occurred to her that she shouldn’t be in a bed.

She bolted upright quite immediately, only then realizing that Q was in the bed, too, half-falling over the other side, but that was not quite what really caught her attention.

Someone had made breakfast.

With bacon she does not have in her apartment.

As she got out of bed, she thanked her parents for passing down the genes that allowed her to avoid having hangovers, picking up a lamp on her way out. She made it all the way to the kitchen door before she simply stood there, lamp in hand, staring at what she was seeing.

Which did not really make sense, except that it does, because it was 003 and 006 in the same kitchen, one drinking coffee and the other shovelling bacon down his throat. 007 was standing by the stove.

007 was standing by the stove.

“Good morning, Moneypenny,” 007 greeted first, causing the other two to notice her – she was not buying that one, they would not be 00-agents if they did not realise she was awake the moment she woke up – but it certainly convinced her to take a step back, out of the kitchen into the living room, set her lamp down and take a deep breath, before going back in.

They were all still there.

“What are you doing in my kitchen?” she asked, deciding to get over the fact that they were all here.

“Well,” 003 started with a lazy drawl. “Jaimesie here –” he indicated 007 with a hand wave “– has finally fessed up to the fact that he’s head-over-tails for our little puppy. We are really just here because he is,” he finished, striding towards her now, coffee cup still in hand.

The shark-like grin displaying all his sharp, sharp teeth was unnerving, but it did not unsettle her so much as make her suspicious. It did not help her confusion much, either; just when did 003 become friends with 007?

By that point, though, 006 had stood up, too, and she was in last night’s dress standing there after only a few hours of sleep – she really did not fancy her chances against two, possibly three, 00’s – and honestly, she just wanted to see Q happy and if 007 was it, fine. Also, she noted ruefully, she probably should start getting to know 007 better, since it appears that he might become a bigger part of her life than he was, previously. At the very least, if things worked out, he would have to become Bond.

* * *

 

She let 003 and 006 steer her out gently, even boarding their car without a fuss, and she just knew that this unsettled both of them even if neither showed it.

They took her to a mall – all the shops were closed – and then to the beach – the water was _freezing_ at this time of the year – and then back home, where the cats greeted them by launching themselves at the two 00’s flanking her. For that, she would forgive them for clawing the door, but Q was still paying for the reparations.

Watching two 00’s get impatient at cats because they would _not get off_ was hilarious, as was the way they suddenly tried to be gentler as soon as she reminded them that “They’re Q’s” before getting frustrated again.

It did not distract her from the distinct lack of both Q and 007 in her apartment, but she’s fine with that.

007 will receive his balls as earrings if he does this to Q again, though.

**Author's Note:**

> So I sat down and finished this in 55 minutes - yay! - after watching the countdown and it's not beta'd or edited so all mistakes are mine and I wish you all a Happy New Year!  
> And let me know what you thought, please?


End file.
